


After the Rain

by Cinzia



Category: Covert Affairs
Genre: Annie being clever, Ben being Ben, F/M, Jai being a woobie, M/M, Multi, a wild OFC appears, there's Auggie in here somewhere too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 00:50:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3999619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinzia/pseuds/Cinzia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie has a theory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta’ed, and also I’m bad at titles. Supposed to be a missing scene from a few days after Season 2 premiere episode. Dialogues and canon scenes slightly altered because all this happens in Annie’s head and memory is subjective (ie, her flashbacks in the show are wrong and the ones in this fic are right - that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).
> 
> Disclaimer: not mine, never happened in the show (but it might just as well have)
> 
> Spoilers: 1x08 What Is and What Should Never Be, 1x11 When the Levee Breaks, 2x01 Begin the Begin

As she waits for the bartender to fill in their new order, Annie leans back with her elbows against the counter, surveying Allen’s Tavern: it’s Wednesday evening, almost going to Thursday now, and not many patrons are around – their own table is probably the liveliest.

The plump, youngish redhead (stylish smoky eyed makeup, just a little smudged around the edges, classy black dress just a tad too revealing) who has oh so smoothly joined them after Auggie had oh so accidentally bumped his cane into her on his way back from the washroom, is all but leaning into him, all heavy-lidded eyes and breathless giggles whenever Auggie says anything – and Annie has to admit, once more, that the man is _good_.

She has no idea how he manages to do it, but he does, effortlessly, whenever he doesn’t feel like going home alone, and not for the first time she wonders how he must’ve been before – before Iraq, before the blast that took away his sight. He couldn’t possibly have been any better at this – it would’ve been inhuman.

Speaking of which.

Jai is sitting back in his chair right there, between Auggie’s new friend and Annie’s empty seat, absentmindedly twirling around his by now empty beer bottle, the brilliant white of perfect teeth barely showing against his dark skin in that omnipresent crinkly-eyed grin of his. He looks for all the world as if he’s enjoying himself, just chilling with friends after a hard day’s work. He looks relaxed, at ease: dress jacket draped casually over the back of his chair, tie loosened around his neck, the first button of his shirt undone. The pale pink cotton makes him look darker still, his deep, huge eyes stand out even more.

Annie knows him well enough, by now, to tell that he’s barely there at all.

What was that Danielle had whispered to her that night, her voice wavering between admiration and bewilderment?

“His bone structure is so perfect, it’s ridiculous – are you sure he’s even human?”

If you’d listen to several people at the Agency, Annie had wanted to reply, no, he’s not – he’s Henry Wilcox’s son, and that alone marks him as different. Not much humanity to be found in the old Wilcox, after all.

But Jai…

He _is_ beautiful, in an almost preternatural way. Beautiful and graceful and charming – and yet there he is, sitting right next to this hot girl and it’s as though she can’t even see him, as though he’s invisible.

Annie knows perfectly well that this is how Jai wants it.

Annie has a theory.

Just as she turns around to collect their beers, she notices Auggie and the girl getting up, Jai lazily giving them a mock military salute while leaning further back in his chair. They make their (very touchy-feely, bordering on inappropriate) way through the pub, and then they’re gone.

Annie rolls her eyes. Typical, she thinks. And then she thinks, maybe it’s time to test her newly-formed theory.

“Looks like there’s more for us,” she sing-songs brightly, putting two new bottles down in front of Jai’s outstretched hand, bringing the other two to her seat. “Auggie’s on fire these days.”

Jai chuckles, looking back at her from under his long, long lashes, so curly and perfect _Damn him_ , and clinks their beers together. They take a sip and then he drawls, “Well, he’s not exactly a troll, is he.”

There it is again, that itch at the back of her mind, the nagging thought, the need she feels every time her brain latches onto something and she just can’t leave it alone until she has it all figured out completely – until she is proven right.

She looks back at him from over the rim of her bottle, knowing she’s still far too sober for where she suspects this line of thinking might head, but now she has started and once it’s on it's ON. She was never able to switch it off again.

…and there is a military hospital bed in the corner of her mind, its perfect angles mocking her with their precise, untouched emptiness - a frantic helicopter ride with so much blood seeping through her fingers - and through it all, the steady, unrelenting sound of rain pouring down the thatched roof of a bungalow on a hot, wet Srilankan night. She can feel her seashell bracelet digging curves like small moons in the soft skin of her inner wrist, where her pulse beats.

She realizes she’s been staring at Jai – at the way his soft, full lips wrap around the neck of the bottle to take a drink – for maybe longer than she’d intended when she sees his eyes narrow, his long elegant fingers shift around the cool dark glass, tightening their grip.

Her face, for some reason, feels hot.

“Annie,” he says. There is genuine concern in his voice. “Are you all right?”

She takes a breath, looks down, then deliberately back up into those dark, impossibly huge eyes that make him look somehow younger, will always make him look younger than he truly is. She holds his gaze.

“I should be asking you that.”

She hadn’t really paid attention to him then, two years ago: of course she hadn’t, she hadn’t know him back then, never even realized all these men were, in fact, just the one man – standing barely outside her immediate field of vision, just _there_ – always there.

But now, with the advantage of hindsight and knowledge, her memory starts playing back all of those incidents at her, fitting them together like long-lost pieces of an half-forgotten puzzle, with startling clarity, as though they’d just been waiting around in a dusty old drawer, waiting for her to discover them again, to take them out and look at them in full daylight.

To see them for what they really are.

So she does just that. She takes them out, puts them side by side to her other memories – the ones she’s clung to and cherished for two long, desperate years – and she looks.

The tall skinny man, curly haired and dark skinned – not a local, as she had assumed – not at all – who seemed to always be around whenever she got distracted and wandered off on her own to check out a souvenir stall or to take a picture of a sunset – she would turn just in time to see them, this young man and Ben talking together animatedly, their heads bent close together, Ben’s tilted down just a little toward this – friend, she had supposed? Lost tourist? A particularly insistent vendor? – as if to hear him better, though they were already standing so close – but now she can clearly see the look in Ben’s eyes, and it had been… soft. Kind.

Fond.

…and of course Annie hadn’t registered that back then, had thought nothing of it, because why should’ve she? It was…

It was, she can see it so perfectly now, the very same look Ben had worn whenever he’d looked at her.

And so she had not noticed how out of place it must be, that Ben would look at some stranger like that, too. She hadn’t thought anything of it because she’d been in love, and in her mind that was the look he had all the time.

But now she lets herself _see_.

The man outside their hotel. The man in the busy market street. The man so patiently waiting in the pouring rain while inside the bungalow Annie planned for a future that would never be.

The man who, as soon as Ben had jogged up to join him, had pressed himself right up into his personal space, saying something that was lost in the loud rushing of the monsoon, his hands coming up to – not to push, not aggressive, not warning, as she’d confusedly thought at the time – just to touch, to stay there, simply there, familiar, steady on Ben’s chest.

Almost as if pleading.

Only, Annie can’t imagine Jai Wilcox pleading with anybody.

She hadn’t been able to see Ben’s expression then, as his back had been turned to her – but he hadn’t moved away. And his hands – his hands had come up, too.

They hadn’t pushed away.

“You’re an asshole,” Jai had bitten out that day at the hospital, before leaving Ben alone with Annie. He’d sounded… not merely pissed off, not really confrontational.

He’d sounded resigned.

Hurt.

“He cares about you,” Annie had told Ben afterwards. Even then she knew it was true: she’d seen how worried – no: scared - Jai had looked in the helicopter after all, when Ben had passed out and together they had pressed on his wound so tightly, their fingers intertwining, trying to keep Ben’s life in, and all the blood, all that blood… He’d tried to hide it, but she’d seen.

Just like she’d seen the flash of – guilt? Regret? – pass quickly in Ben’s eyes after she’d said that.

She thinks that’s when the theory had started forming in the back of her mind.

“Why on earth shouldn’t I be,” Jai says now. But his eyes are carefully fixed on the empty tabletop between them, his tone so well guarded it sounds almost natural – almost. It’s not really a question.

“You _knew_ Ben Mercer,” Annie had hissed at him not long ago, when all this mess had started. “How well did you know him?”

The pause. The hesitation. Jai’s uncertain smile fading. That look in his eyes – the same Ben would then have at the hospital.

Regret.

“For a brief time, I thought I knew him well,” Jai had said, softly. And unspoken, the words lingering between them like an accusation – on whose part, Annie can’t now say –

_As well as you did._

All the little things – and the not so little – Jai’s smiles, so bright they could lit up a room – his sparkling eyes, the unmistakable flirtatious banter they so easily engaged in – the small affectionate but always respectful touches, never lingering, barely there – his understanding after the failure (nice, pleasant, still a failure) of their first and only date -

“It’s ok, take all the time you need. I’ll be around.”

…and the complete, absolute, glaring lack of heat behind it all.

 _It’s not just Auggie_ , Annie suddenly thinks. _I’ve been blind too._

She licks her lips, thoughtfully. In this newfound clarity, she finds in herself a new appreciation – a new respect, even – for the man sitting in front of her, wearing this… persona… as smoothly and flawlessly as one of his exquisitely expensive suits: it must not be easy being Jai Wilcox, the Prince of Darkness’s dark skinned, foreign looking son, pretty as can be, soft spoken and cultured, always impeccably dressed, perfectly… perfect. Too perfect.

 _Does Henry know?_ she wonders. And then: _Of course Henry knows. It’s_ Henry _._

She can surmise now why Henry, cold, manipulating Henry, would always act with such disdain, with barely concealed contempt towards this accomplished, brilliant man, this perfect son any other father would be so proud of, so happy to show off to the world.

“No particular reason,” she says now, suddenly tired of it all, and catches the way his eyes harden when he spies the Sri Lanka bracelet around her wrist. Ben's gift. The way he seems to swallow dryly and look away.

It decides everything.

Annie sits up straighter, and tilts her bottle toward him, waiting for Jai to finally get the hint and tilt his own against it, glass tinkling together.

“To a new tomorrow,” Annie says before realizing she’s saying anything at all. “That we can find a man who truly deserves us.”

The widening of Jai’s eyes would be almost comical, if it weren’t for the terrified, vulnerable look dawning in them as soon as the meaning of her words sinks in – but she slides her free hand around his, catching his fingers safely within hers, squeezing a little, suddenly, strangely shy – and after a long, long moment, she feels him squeezing back.

She wonders if Jai hates her, if she hates Jai - she lets herself picture, for just one moment, his hands on Ben’s body, Ben’s hands on Jai’s: how it must've looked... hot and desperate, breathless and heady at first, then angry, resentful, toward the end? ...their hands holding each other, unwilling to part... dark and light, just like their clasped hands now – and she knows he doesn’t, and she doesn’t.

Mostly, she thinks she hates being right, never being able to leave things alone: because once she can see, there is no going back.

But it’s not even that – not really that.

She hates Henry Wilcox – of course, everybody hates Henry Wilcox – and for the first time, she thinks she might hate Ben, just a little – for leaving again.

For leaving them.

 “To a new tomorrow, Annie,” Jai says, his voice so soft and deep, but clear. He doesn’t take his hand away, but for the first time in – maybe ever since they met – his smile, hesitant as it is, reaches his eyes, and it’s like the sun after a long, long rain.

Annie looks down at their intertwined fingers – no blood underneath, no Ben - not anymore – and realizes she’s smiling back. She tightens her grip, feels the seashells shift again, the fit too tight around her wrist, their lines too hard. Funny how she never noticed before how much it hurt her.

She thinks, It’s time to bury it in the backyard for good.

They're still holding hands when the clock in Allen's Tavern strikes twelve.

 

\- End


End file.
